hrefTranslate is present under the Google Chrome brand
Present under the Google Chrome brand on a default profile. Absent when translation is turned off by the user or by policy, which is ordinary; information only (severity: info).
What a detector infers
HTMLAnchorElement.prototype.hrefTranslate is a runtime-enabled feature that Chrome only switches on when its translation service is available, which needs two things: the build must have Google API keys, and the 'Offer to translate' preference must be on. Branded Google Chrome ships with keys, so on a default profile the attribute is present; Edge exposes it too. A Chromium build compiled without Google API keys never has it, whatever brand its user agent names.
So a browser claiming the Google Chrome brand without hrefTranslate is either a keyless build presenting as Chrome, or a real Chrome whose user turned translation off. The second case is ordinary — the preference is a visible setting, and the TranslateEnabled enterprise policy turns it off across a fleet — which is why this row is information only and never scored. chrome-headless-shell lacks it as well, because it never sets the preference.
Measured present on Chrome and Edge on Windows and Linux; a keyless build claiming Chrome has not been measured, so the failing side rests on the source alone.
How to resolve it
Nothing to fix on an ordinary browser. A build without Google API keys is honestly described as Chromium; presenting it under the Google Chrome brand leaves out the surfaces those keys switch on.
Nearby checks in Capability surfaces
- Web Share is present or absent as the claimed platform's Chrome ships it
web-share-vs-osnavigator.share is present or absent depending on the platform the Chrome binary was built for. - C:/ parses the way the claimed OS's Chromium parses it
url-drive-letter-vs-osChromium's URL library contains a Windows-only rule: a string that begins with a drive letter, such as 'C:/x', is treated as a file path and… - The system colour palette belongs to the claimed OS
system-colors-vs-osWindows and Linux Chrome resolve the CSS system colours and their built-in form-control styles differently, and some of the differences are… - The device-API family is present or absent as a unit
device-api-family-coherenceWeb Bluetooth, WebUSB, WebSerial and WebHID are one family on Chromium desktop - the same secure-context gating, the same desktop platforms… - A build claiming Chrome carries the Privacy Sandbox surface Chrome ships
privacy-sandbox-vs-chrome-claimTopics, Protected Audience, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames all shipped to Chrome stable in 115 and are present by default on desktop. - Firefox resistFingerprinting announces itself when enabled
firefox-resist-fingerprinting-identifiableFirefox's privacy.resistFingerprinting substitutes CONSTANTS rather than randomness, and a constant is itself a fingerprint. - The CSS feature surface is identical in a fresh realm
css-surface-vs-realmWhich CSS properties, values and selectors an engine understands is decided when the browser is compiled. - Device-level media features are identical in a fresh realm
media-surface-vs-realmMedia features are answered by the layout engine rather than by the JavaScript properties that describe the same machine, which is what…
Clearcote is a browser built for fingerprint coherence
It is a Chromium fork, maintained by the same people who wrote this reference. It ships as a compiled browser rather than as a stealth script injected into someone else's — which is a description of how it is built, and is not an argument about how it behaves on this check.
This audit takes no position on how Clearcote scores on Capability surfaces checks, on this one, or anywhere else. It has no baseline corpus of other people's fingerprints to rank you against and no vendor scoreboard — nearly every check is self-referential, asking one browser the same question through two independent APIs and reporting whether both answers can be true at once. It runs identically on any browser, including ours. Run it on yours and read the result yourself.
See the other checks in Capability surfaces — the family href-translate-vs-brand belongs to.